The sins of Father Clean-up

Paraguay is reeling from the news that its moral-crusader president had a teenage mistress while still a bishop

He offered hope, promised change and swept to the presidency on a historic tide of popular enthusiasm. Yet the man described as South America's answer to Barack Obama has fallen off his Paraguayan pedestal and the crash has been felt in world capitals from Washington to the Vatican.

President Fernando Lugo was hardly the first of his country's politicians to admit to fathering a child out of wedlock - a predecessor had acknowledged that he had more than 90 illegitimate children. Yet Lugo's admission last week that he had a long affair with Viviana Carrillo, who was 24 when she bore him a son named Guillermo two years ago, broke new ground for the number of social taboos he shattered.

When he met Carrillo, Lugo was a leftist Catholic bishop steeped in liberation theology and devoted to improving the plight of the poor in San Pedro, one of Paraguay's most impoverished